As I look at them all under this pleasant lighting in this cozy room with classics and theology stacked to its ceiling I know I should feel bad for wanting to leave it all behind sometimes, to not be known any longer...

I'm braiding
her sister's hair after food, and my hands are a little greasy
because it was pizza and I didn't use my napkin perhaps as much as
I should have. I have no manners, I noticed, the last time I was at a
nice resturant I felt like that cliché Calamity Jane character in
desperate need of a makeover as all those I was sitting with
gracefully and automatically and with great ceremony released their
napkins to full size and extended them over their laps as I extended
my own fingers toward the pile of bread that was calling me. I have a
lot of catching up to do, I realize, but at least I don't need
people anymore, I think. Or that is what this sister whose hair I am
braiding said to me not long ago, thus implying that I was needy once
and making me irrepressibly annoyed. Excuse me, I am nomadic and a
rock and an island, clearly, and I don't need anyone calling my
reputation into question. As I look at them all under this pleasant
lighting in this cozy room with classics and theology stacked to its
ceiling I know I should feel bad for wanting to leave it all behind
sometimes, to not be known any longer, lest I be thought of in the
unremarkable way that I sometimes think I am. But there will never be
any new people like this, so I will fold these thoughts up as I
usually do; I will tuck them away for another cold day when I am not
braiding her hair.

I'm talking to her brother as he sits
beside the family computer, letting the glow from its screen, far
from my view, illuminate the toll that this school year has taken on
his eyes, the skin surrounding them seeming worn out from being
propped up and pried open. I don't know what we're talking about,
a mutual friend or what to do with academic apathy, which is not his
possession as often as it lives with me like an unwelcome feline, or
maybe I am chatting about the very feline I daringly rescued from its
garbage dump home last week and its lack of appreciation for my
bravery. Maybe he's listening, but probably not. His sister, the
tallest one, is piping in with her wise tone that always makes me
wish I were younger so that we could be best friends, and while I'm
thinking about this music begins to fill the room, slipping by all of
us mostly unnoticed, it is quiet and soft and subtle for the most
part. The four of us do tend to favor the depressing, but then again
who, in the world who would like to think that they have a thought in
their head, doesn't? It's guitar city in here, then a sad piano,
then a parade of indies that in this moment I would prefer never to
cease.

My ears do take specific notice when a favorite song
that conjures my memories of a strange time on my own, long before I
met any of these comfortable couchfellows, is chosen. The band is the
most of the indie scene, perhaps the most overrated but I like them
anyway, more nowso then then, and the singer's voice seems to me in
character as always just a little bit older than a boy's for
reasons I can never say. The song is louder and more intense than
this singer has a right to be, though, and his themes are strong and
sweeping and too romantic for him. He begins his song-story by
describing someone special, then explaining that he very rashly left
this Special One's side one morning, leaving behind a note of
goodbye, and then begins his chorus in first-person telling her that
she will be loved beyond her wildest dreams someday. At one time I
listened to this wide-eared, aching, sometimes overeagerly striking
the replay button before the song had even ended. I hate this
song.

"This is one of my favorite depression songs," I
say, to all of them or no one in particular. She tries to nod, but I
have my hands on her head so this is difficult. "This is one of my
favorite songs," He says, as if he hadn't heard me say anything-
if he had I think he wouldn't use the word favorite so soon after
me- we are too word concious around here. "He's such a jerk
though," I say, a little bit louder but carelessly, the way you do
when you expect everyone around you to commiserate, the way I imagine
liberals behave at Obama support parties or how crazy taxidermists
talk aloud at moose lodges across the country. It takes me a moment
to notice I am being looked at with disdain. "are you kidding me?"
comes across the room to greet me, waking up my soon-to-be impressive
defenses. "It's exactly the opposite," he's saying,
animatedly. "He's the one giving her a chance." This is
nonsensical. I had no idea that such a song would be somehow akin to
the divisive quality of a Lynch movie. I hear my voice morphing into
that strange, partially offended, partially light-hearted tone that I
take when I nonchalantly argue with my friends with intent about the
media.

"Have you actually LISTENED to the song?"Yes,
of course he had. He thinks I don't get it at all."And you
think SHE'S the jerk? He leaves her-"No, he doesn't think
she's the jerk, there is no jerk to be had."He leaves her-
they don't break up. He leaves her- he says right there that he
literally fled. He didn't care at all about her."Yes, he
left, but that could just be figurative. Of course he cared about
her, he describes her so beautifully at first."He fle-d. And he
knew exactly how much he meant to her-"Now now…"Listen-
right there he says she's crying because of him."He knows
it's painful, but he wants what's best for her."He's a
coward and the entire chorus is simply him trying to make himself
feel better."He's comparing himself to a bad dream!"He's
letting himself off the hook! He's implying that she didn't mean
anything…"He's implying that he won't mean anything in
the end…"He says he 'feels no regret'."He knows he's
not the one for her."I hate it."Well, you're just an
angry girl, then, aren't you?

The pause is barely noticeable
but entirely audible to me, oh so loud and clear. There is nothing
different in his slightly amused tone, in the tone of the room or the
warmth of it or the slickness of the oft-dyed hair slipping between
my fingers now. His smugness and dismissive wave of hand follows as
if to say I'll never understand and waits to meet with my usual
exhale of breath and blustery mutterings as if to say he'll never
understand as these cozy disagreements usually seem to conclude with,
the ones that usually start with a comparison of short story writers
or ponderance on the limits of guilty pleasures or whether or not the
majority of America likes bananas with their peanut butter or who
made a better badass cowboy, Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad, and
the Ugly or Clint Eastwood in Fistful? But the grouchy chumliness is
a long time coming from my mouth, the friendly exasperation, when it
does come and of course it does, is not as high-quality as we depend
it to be. We do our jobs, natch, but the surprise revelation is too
tricky; its bluntness almost too obvious to be attended to, like in
that Poe story (about the letter that was put out in the open so that
no one could find it). The preciseness, the correctness of his
assessment is so very accidentally on point that even he can't
identify the target, and the birth of my conviction is too large for
all of this small pleasantness, so as I attempt to tuck it away she
talks about movie stars, and she requests that I undo my progress and
make it French, and he carefully plays another sad song that I
haven't heard before.

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